Nissan Turns Racing Green

NISSAN LEAF NISMO RCThere’s not much visual LEAF DNA to be found in the low-slung and beefy NISMO RC one-off.

Find electric cars a bit of a turnoff? Nissan sure doesn’t -- and we’re starting to think they might have a point. Having already teased us with the mercurial ESFLOW concept in Geneva, we witnessed the new LEAF NISMO RC hit the track in anger at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, putting a fresh spin on "racing green."

While the ESFLOW is still, in essence, just a concept, it’s rooted nonetheless in tech that’s both rolling on tarmac already inside the quietly unassuming Nissan LEAF and on test tracks in the form of the Nissan LEAF NISMO RC.

The ESFLOW boasts true eco-qualities like zero emissions and the promise to cover 240 km on a single charge, but what gets our hedonistically biased attention is the promise of near supercar pace too. From 0 to 100km/h in under 5 silent seconds? This sure looks like an EV to envy.

Although the LEAF NISMO RC shares the zero emission power train and lithium-ion batteries with the road-going LEAF, the rest of it is a whole new ball game. Effectively a rolling laboratory for EV performance experimentation, it aims to form the foundation of a whole new green motorsport series in due course.